Recipe: Nanaimo bars

Recipe: Nanaimo bars
Source: My Kitchen Antics

We had a big family event at the weekend that required lots and lots of cake! I was happy to help and was asked to make something that would serve 20+ people. As well as being tasty, it needed to be something that could be stored for a couple of days, wasn’t messy to eat and, since I work full-time, I also wanted it to be incredibly easy to make or a recipe that I’d successfully made before. I opted for the latter...

I was first told about Nanaimo bars by a colleague in my old work. She told me they originated in Canada and, once I’d looked them up on Wikipedia, I knew I just had to make them. When the time came, I settled on this recipe from My Kitchen Antics (adapted from The Boy Who Bakes) because I was too lazy to follow a recipe that used cups for measurements, and I also liked the way it had added pecans to the base.

The first time I ever made these, I also made a peanut butter version (following a different recipe), and both types were a big hit. I’ve made this ‘original’ recipe again since and they turned out exactly the same – no problems! My memory did fail me, though, as I was thinking I’d only previously got 16 pieces out of the batch rather than the predicted 20–25, so I ended up making two batches for the weekend...I ended up with 40 slices. Oh well, the more the merrier!

For some reason, I didn’t read the recipe properly on this occasion, so I lined my baking trays with greased baking paper rather than foil. Whilst this did turn out ok, it made it harder to ease the finished product from the tins, so I’ll definitely be sticking to the foil in future!

The recipe was as easy as I remembered it. I used digestive biscuits which I whizzed in the food processor and the smell of these combined with the coconut was fantastic. When preparing the cocoa mixture for the base, I loved watching it turn silky and thick and, once combined with the rest of the ingredients, all the elements held together really well and left the mixing bowl clean once transferred to the baking tray. It smelt delicious and tiffin-like, although its slightly greasy appearance didn’t look promising in terms of any health benefits. (Who am I kidding? This was never going to be a healthy treat!) In terms of pressing this layer down into the tin, I’ve always found that the back of a metal serving spoon does the job nicely.

 

The middle layer was my only cause for concern on this occasion. When mixing the butter and icing sugar, it didn’t go smooth before I added the cream (as the picture shows), and I couldn’t remember if that had happened before. I carried on regardless and, thankfully, everything turned out fine. For this layer, I used a spatula to spread it evenly.

I was slightly nervous about the final layer of these bars as my last experience was of making an orange version where I made the stupid mistake of setting the heat too high and leaving the chocolate for the full two minutes without checking on it. The result was a burnt-tasting ganache! I definitely learnt from my error and had no further problems this time so I quite happily applied it to the top of the traybake with a palette knife.

The only downside of this recipe is that it does require patience in taking time to spread each layer out carefully (although I’m a non-artistic perfectionist so probably take longer than most!) and then leaving them to set. On this occasion, my start to end baking time was around five hours but, bearing in mind I made two batches, stopped for lunch, had a couple of fights with cling film (urgh) and realised part way through that I didn’t have enough icing sugar and had to wait for more to arrive, this seemed totally reasonable. Even better was the fact that I remained stress-free throughout!

Most importantly, the Nanaimo bars were as rich as ever. They had a lovely chocolatey taste with a subtle coconut flavour and chunky pecans. I guess they weren’t too dissimilar from other chocolate traybakes, but I think these Nanaimo bars were sweeter than most, although this was mellowed greatly by the chocolate. I’ve always found that the custard adds more texture than flavour, whilst the icing sugar provides a different, slightly grainy texture in the middle layer, which is also something different to other similar treats.

 

As for the crowd, they were definitely pleased – I only heard positive comments from those who tried them and some people raved and raved. I know I’ll be making these for years to come!

  

Ease of recipe: 9.5/10
Finished product: 9/10
Overall score: 9.25/10
Bake again? Yes

Cadbury Creme Egg

Product name: Cadbury Creme Egg
Calories: 180 for a 40g egg
Country of origin: UK 

I didn’t think I’d get a chance to review the wonderful Cadbury Creme Egg this year but then I found a friend of mine, who doesn’t like them (shock, horror!), had been given some that she didn’t want. She kindly gave one to me so, weeks after Easter, here it is!

There was no nutritional information provided on the red, yellow and purple wrapper of this Mondelez product so I obtained this from Cadbury's website. However, the packaging did provide the description of a ‘milk chocolate egg with a soft fondant centre (47%)’ which, I noticed, was 2% more filling than the mini version I’ve previously reviewed.

This larger egg had an almost identical appearance to the minis – it simply had stars on both sides instead of just on one. There was something about the bigger size, though, that made it even more mouth-watering to look at! The Creme Egg emitted a fantastic ‘Easter’ scent of chocolate combined with the famous sweet, sweet, fondant, and I found the incredibly chunky shell (just look at it!) was surprisingly hard to cut in half. However, doing so revealed the wonderfully gooey mass within, although I apologise for the flecks of stray chocolate that got mixed up with this egg-inspired centre.

Due to the way I cut this egg, I sacrificed my preferred method of consumption (biting the top off and licking out the middle), but I could still tell that the ratio of chocolate to fondant worked much better on this larger scale. The sugary centre oozed out of its chunky shell and it was thoroughly enjoyable.

The taste was also pretty much the same as the mini eggs but I did think the chocolate tasted less sweet. I re-checked the wrapper and saw it contained a minimum of 14% milk solids whereas the mini variety's minimum was 20%. I’m not sure if this is what my tastebuds were detecting but, either way, I thought it was bit odd to use a different type of chocolate for what was essentially the same product!

Anyway, it didn’t matter, because I loved having this little reminder of Easter in June!

Appearance: 8/10
Aroma: 7.5/10
Taste: 7.5/10
Texture: 8/10
Overall score: 7.75/10

Cadbury Creme Egg (minis)

Product name: Cadbury Creme Egg (minis)
Calories: 50 per 11.5g egg (400 per 89g bag)
Country of origin: UK

Can you believe I only had one Cadbury Creme Egg this year? I didn’t even get to review it as I had it on Easter day at my brother’s house! Thankfully, though, the Easter Bunny decided to get me an egg that came with a bag of eight mini ones.

Made by Mondelez UK, the bag contained the familiar red and purple colour scheme with a yellow splat – I do love this branding as it’s so instantly recognisable and gets me excited about the time of year. Inside, the ‘mini eggs of fun’ were individually foil-wrapped, and these could be viewed through a window on the bag.

The ‘milk chocolate eggs with a soft fondant centre (45%)’ used chocolate that contained a minimum of 20% milk solids. These shells were a bit matt in appearance so they didn’t look incredible and, due to the fondant having a tendency of making them a bit sticky, they didn’t feel great either. However, the eggs were decorated with the Cadbury logo and some stars, and there was no denying the gooeyness of the glossy fondant within. I must say that the novelty of the egg whites and yolk appearance never gets old for me either.

I loved the sugary sweet fondant smell that combined with the chocolate aroma of these eggs. The very viscous fondant provided a sugary hit which was unsurprising, really – you could tell it contained a lot of sugar from where the knife had made contact with the fondant and created a more crystallised appearance. (Per 100g, these Creme Eggs contained 67g of sugar!)

The chocolate melted relatively nicely but wasn’t totally smooth. However, I did like the cooling effect of the fondant as the two elements merged. This did also result in the fondant’s taste having less of an impact. This wasn’t an issue for me, but I do understand how some people (my own mother included!) find Creme Eggs too sickly, so sucking these smaller eggs may help.

When chewing, the fondant provided a liquidy burst through the chunky chocolate. However, there was no doubt in my mind that I prefer the regular-sized Cadbury Creme Eggs. My answer to the famous question ‘How do you eat yours?’ would be biting off the top of an egg and scooping out the middle with my tongue. However, this wasn’t an option here.  Size was the main issue but I also found that the fondant seemed thicker and a little less gooey so, even when trying to lick out an egg that had been cut in half length-ways, it was really hard to get it to budge.

In summary, then, I liked the flavours on offer from these mini Creme Eggs but, for me, the different ratio of chocolate to fondant made the overall experience a little less enjoyable than a standard Creme Egg.

Appearance: 7.5/10
Aroma: 7.5/10
Taste: 7.5/10
Texture: 7/10
Overall score: 7.38/10

Nestlé Milkybar: Mini eggs

Product name: Nestlé Milkybar: Mini eggs
Purchase details: £1.00 for a 100g bag (tesco.com)
Calories: 101 per seven sweet serving (503 per bag)

I’m sure I first had these Nestlé Milkybar: Mini eggs a few years ago but, if I did, I’ve definitely only ever had them once, so I thought it was about time I tried them again! Since most products of this nature contain milk chocolate, I loved that this product consisted of ‘white chocolate mini eggs in a crisp sugar shell’ instead.

I really liked the bag these Mini eggs came in. It followed the usual red and pale yellow theme of the Milkybar brand and featured an illustration of the Milkybar Kid riding a horse carrying a basket of the eggs and also pulling a cow and some chicks – very child-friendly.

The sweets were made for the UK and Ireland and contained ‘all natural ingredients’. The white chocolate contributed to 63% of the overall product but the hard shells were still pretty thick and very difficult to cut into! These shells were smooth, glossy and a very pale cream in colour and, whilst the inner chocolate wasn’t massively different in shade, it did look more yellow in comparison.

The Mini eggs had a milky white chocolate scent with an added sugary element and the chocolate itself was the usual Milkybar kind. I can’t say I actually eat Milkybar products much these days but these eggs did leave me wondering why! The chocolate had a really strong vanilla taste that actually reminded me of Magnum ice cream – it was very creamy and sweet.

The outer shells were fairly sweet to suck but not in the same was as Cadbury Mini Eggs – presumably due to the absence of a dusty coating. However, the shells did still add a little bit of extra sweetness, and they were also incredibly crispy. Combined with the chunky chocolate in these fat little sweets, I really enjoyed the texture, although they did become quite hard work to chew when eating the whole pack in one go - it was worth it, though!

These Milkybar: Mini eggs were incredibly moreish and reignited my sadness over the loss of the old Milkybar: Munchies. Please bring them back, Nestlé!

Appearance: 7.5/10
Aroma: 7/10
Taste: 7.5/10
Texture: 7.5/10
Overall score: 7.38/10